Adobe Acrobat XI Review

Exporting Into Non-PDF Formats

Adobe really outdid itself with this one. Not only are existing PDFs now editable in Acrobat XI, but they can also be exported into various formats like PowerPoint, Excel, Word, and web page, just to name a few. Also, these exported documents are editable in their native applications. Now, the conversion is not always 100% perfect, and we suspect that the origin of the file plays a role. For example, a PowerPoint presentation converted to a PDF that in turn gets converted back into PowerPoint had a greater chance of being close to 100% of the original. Along these lines, documents that were created in Illustrator, InDesign or even Word have a greater chance of being misinterpreted in an Acrobat-generated PowerPoint document. While testing this feature, we even took an InDesign PDF, turned it into a PowerPoint file and opened the .pptx in Apple's Keynote. Results can be seen on the screenshot; apart from images being broken by the InDesign “drop shadow”, everything else is in place, and is editable. As expected, the “export to HTML” works great for clean text documents like contracts, and works terribly for everything else.


PDF files can now be exported into a wide range of file formats, all editable.


The power of the export tool: An InDesign document PDF, exported from Acrobat XI to PowerPoint, loaded in Keynote. Drop shadows messed up the layout, but everything else is there and is editable.

“For I Have Tasted the Fruit”

Adobe gave us a nice diagram of how much time and money can be saved by using Acrobat XI for handling paperwork in a large company. We cannot test that or claim whether those figures are true or false. We did test Acrobat XI, however, on a much smaller scale, on a scale that will be important for individuals; professionals that populate small and large companies alike. We took a 20-page PDF filled with text and images and edited it “the old way”, using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, translating all texts into another language and replacing all images. Then we took the same PDF document and edited it from within Acrobat XI. It took us almost exactly 8 hours doing it “the old way” compared to roughly 2.5 hours in Acrobat XI. We will never look back.


Here’s Adobe’s calculation on how much companies can save by addressing the productivity gap. It’s not as beneficial as closing a mineshaft gap, but still pretty good.